UCC Investment Priorities for 2022 and Beyond

IT Decision Makers Reveal Investment Plans for the Next Normal

In the 2022 Unified Communications and Collaboration Industry Outlook, the publisher's Connected Work research team keeps its fingers on the pulse of IT decision makers (ITDMs) across regions, industries and organization sizes. We surveyed thousands of ITDMs about their current unified communications and collaboration technology adoption status, business goals, challenges and future investment plans. This report details those results.

The vast majority of ITDMs state that they expect their 2022 IT/telecom budgets to increase or remain the same compared to 2021. They will likely have the financial resources to advance on their technology and digital transformation initiatives. These include adopting digital business models, particularly in the areas of digital commerce, sales and marketing automation, and other digital tools that end customers increasingly expect from the organizations they conduct business with.

This study also gauges the current prevalence of remote and hybrid work, and expected plans to support these practices as the hybrid work era further solidifies. The hybrid workforce and changing work styles are having a profound impact on technology investments, communications solution positioning, as well as end-user organization technology investment stakeholders' expectations. Hybrid work is driving new challenges and opportunities in how formal office spaces are designed and organized, as well as driving initiatives that organizations are undertaking to enhance employee engagement, ensure worker connections and strengthen cultures of equity and inclusion. ITDMs and their respective technology partners will need to account for the needs of an increasing array of technology investment stakeholders and influencers spanning line-of-business, human resources, facilities, security teams and more as they strive to develop holistic programs to address emerging technical and non-technical challenges in their markets and the workforce.

These points, as well as certain inconsistent ITDM responses regarding their goals, challenges and investment priorities open opportunities for candid conversations with UCC providers. Overall, ITDMs indicate that they need more guidance about what actions to take and when to take them amid recent and ongoing uncertainties. Realistic roadmaps co-created by UCC providers with in-depth ITDM input are needed. A consultative approach, flexibility, openness and a willingness to meet customers where they are today, and to take them at their own pace, whether via traditional on-premises, private cloud or pubic cloud deployment, are critical for technology and services provider success, as ITDMs must have it their way. As a result, UCC providers must be selective in their customer engagements to ensure the right fit for both parties.

This wide-ranging study represents the first in a planned series of reports that variously dissect the publisher's extensive ITDM survey data, with future content planned this year to be published in the areas of communications platform as a service (CPaaS), frontliner solutions, meeting rooms, office space utilization, and various industry verticals. Market participants - enabling technology developers, service providers, resellers, IT/telecom decision makers and others--can leverage the findings of these studies to develop sustainable growth strategies. Further discussions with the FConnected Work team may be needed to customize takeaways and strategic implications for each market participant.